Gone. All gone. Who is winning? Who is keeping score here? How will we know when we have a winner? What are the god damned rules?

This in about two weeks.

Of course we have Iraq with some 40,000 gone. Completely gone. Some without identity or burial.

Serial killers, as Juan Cole calls Nasrallah, all of those who carry this on. Men with guns. The National Rifle Associations wet dream of the democracy of the gun. Everyone with a gun in their hand and a gun at their head.

Sri Lanka hardly even gets second tier attention.

800 dead this year. Thousands fleeing the fighting on foot, this week. Why are these less visible than the Israelis and Lebanese?

And Darfur… 400,000 we read (seldom) and counting.

And everybody praying to their own gods — for victory.

Perhaps, confused by blood and fire, they pray to minor deities. Victory Itself is God. Blood sacrifice must be made, forever.

Familes, as in histories we scarcely believe of foreign tribes, raise children, compete for the honor, stand in line, to have them sacrificed to the God. Disembowellings, boiling water, hearts plucked out to satisfy the God. As then. As now. Only now with less control, less ritual, less appreciation.

There is a photo of a headless child. Before we mourn, tell us: Is she yours or is she mine?